Comfort food dinner recipe

November 8, 2008 – 7:29 pm

It started to feel like winter today with the rain/snow and permacloud taking over while I was working outside. It’s times like these that make me appreciate some good and hearty comfort food to warm the soul and fill the belly.

A favorite in our house is a variation of a Quick Cooking recipe “French Country Casserole” in which we just take out the stuff we don’t like (carrots and onions, for example) and still maintain a nice blend of meats and beans and taste. Preparation is about 7 minutes and the dish takes about an hour to bake. So, here’s a nice recipe to warm you up this winter.

  • 1 pound fully cooked Polish sausage (or some other long sausage type of meat like kielbasa) cut into 1/4 inch slices
  • 1 can (16 oz) kidney beans (rinsed and drained)
  • 1 can (15 1/2 oz) great northern beans (rinsed and drained)
  • 1 can (15 oz) black beans (rinsed and drained)
  • 1 can (15 oz) tomato sauce
  • 1/2 cup red wine or beef broth (either works well)
  • 2 tablespoons brown sugar
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons dried thyme

Combine all ingredients in a 2 or 3 quart baking dish, ungreased (we use a glass casserole dish that has that glass cover thing…makes it easier when you are finished). Cover and bake at 375 degrees F for 60-70 minutes. Nine servings. If you like more veggies, you can add 3 medium carrots, thinly sliced and 2 small onions, sliced into rings…but like I mentioned before, we’re not carrot nor onion fans).

Enjoy!

By Vergil | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments (1)

Coffee Stains: Dressing for Success

October 29, 2008 – 9:45 pm

Colin’s at his piano lesson and I’m noticing his outfit for today: Faded navy blue cotton pants and a cranberry-colored plaid shirt. It’s a nice outfit, except he has the pants and the shirt on backward. Apparently it’s Red Ribbon Week at his school and if I remember correctly, he and his school mates will dress up in different ways throughout this week. Today it might be backward day, tomorrow, I think, is crazy hair day. All of this, according to the take-home handout, is to show his spirit for this week: the Red Ribbon week.

I think the first time I realized that dressing up as something wasn’t the greatest way to express my support for some cause probably came in kindergarten when I was changing into my Planet of the Apes “Doctor Cornelius” Halloween costume. I won’t bore you with the details, but let’s just say it is the single reason why I didn’t dress up for Halloween during my childhood.

But I think the real shocker came in college when I was an resident assistant (RA) and the guys in my house wanted to dress me up as a woman. I resisted the idea, stating that I didn’t think was proper for a guy to dress up like a girl (which I knew would have some merit at the college I was attending. I even went to the Dean of Students would siding with my house guys and so I dress up in pink turtle neck, cardigan, plaid shirt, and boots. I was a fright to behold and got the desired affect effect for the ones who dreamt up the outfit in the first place.

We’re in a fairly serious class (I think it was Exegesis-English Bible) and Mr. Brew (our instructor) is lecturing about something equally serious (maybe the overall impact of Tyndale on our current translations) and he stops. Brew (a rather short man with glasses and wonderfully pressed shirts) looks at the class of 30 or so of us and steps toward the middle of the room.

He smiles.

“You know,” he says, “sometimes I wonder.”

He pauses and looks toward the window on his right.

“Sometimes I wonder what we are thinking and how that impacts what we do.”

We pause from our note-taking knowing that this would be another “Brewism”–a piece of thoughtful insight to the larger world beyond the campus on Franklin Avenue. This wasn’t the times that your teacher begins a digression for the sake of hearing one’s own voice. Brew was a smart, wise person who was unassuming with a zing of humor that earned our respect and usually our agreement of his perception.

“For instance,” he continued, “my daughter attends a ‘liberal’ college across town: Calvin. Now we may not agree with the doctrine over there or even how they would view our topic of translation and it’s impact on what we know about the bible.”

He looked at us, then walked to the window and then addressed us again.

“He are at Grand Rapids we have ‘Dress up your RA Day’ as a day of fun…and I’m not saying that’s a particularly bad thing.”

Brew then looked at the notes he’d scribbled on the board and then looked back at us.

“See, today we are having ‘Dress up your RA Day’ and at Calvin they are having a peaceable protest against world hunger.”

He let the words hang and then continued.

“We are so set on being right in our belief here and yet you have to wonder what is happening at Calvin to make them think about their impact on the world.”

Part of me wanted to explain to Brew that I didn’t even want to be dressed up this way and that I didn’t see the purpose of the whole dress up thing anyway. But I couldn’t because I was just feeling guilty for feeling guilty (something that religion does very well). Instead, I felt bad because he was right (something that he did not insist on).

Tomorrow’s crazy hair day and Colin has insisted on going with the green, wacky hair. Colin will be one of those students who will always participate on school or class dress up days. (Heck, he would have loved to be in my spot in kindergarten and then on those Spirit Weeks in high school and probably would have worn makeup with the turtleneck in my “Dress up your RA day”).

He likes to dress up because he likes putting the combinations on. And when the costume goes on so does the persona. Colin as the Joker, Colin as the Penguin, Colin as the Ninja Darth Vader.

And so, as he wears his clothes backward, he is happy to dress the part. And for dressing the part for Red Ribbon Week, he got a sticker.

It’s a round red sticker with an animal on it:

“Don’t monkey around with drugs.”

Piano lesson is over.

By Vergil | Posted in Belief, Boys, Coffee Stains | Comments (5)

Coffee Stains: Album as a lost world

October 24, 2008 – 4:22 pm

She’s reminded me to put the thing away, but for some reason, I simply have not until last night. The photo album had taken up residence under the family room table for about 2 months ago when I dug the thing out of the upstairs “yarn” room (it’s the place where Lori keeps…well, her yarn). And it’s this photo album that I’ve attached a few meanings to and it’s my portal to a time of a younger me—another time, another place, another person. And I took care, when I put my photos in it, to label each page and create a table of contents.

Seems that I did more looking at others and pretty mountains than living an exciting life.

At least, that’s what I get from thumbing through the album last night before Lori’s encouragement to put it away in the yarn room.

We were talking today in 5th hour about LPs and how much music you could fit on the things (I think the point was about the limitations of time on music as restricted by the then current technology). To my best guess, I think we came up with approximately 30 minutes per side.

I’m thinking both of these ways of capturing moments are really old school: photos printed on paper and music engraved on vinyl 12 inch disks. Some people still prefer each of these medium for the archiving of memory and song and I’m thinking I’m happy to reduce the clutter, but there’s something about being subject to someone else’s editorial decisions.

For some reason, my photo album (more scrapbook/yearbook) lacks a chronological order and at times I question the arrangement of the photos. I used a lot of white space because, well, I wanted to fill up the entire book. But the book serves its purpose: to evoke memory of a more innocent time., or, possibly more accurately, a time when I think things were just easier. I take lots of pictures of nature stuff (especially the mountains of Yosemite which I can ot spell correctly). There are pictures of friends doing stuff and other shots of the same people posing. There are only two pictures of me: one of an out-of-focused blond-haired 12-year-old in front of some falls in Northern California on our sixth grade outdoor education trip wearing a navy blue sweatshirt. The hood is down and I have a Star Wars baseball cap on and I have my hands in the front pockets. Janet Burkhart took the picture and apparently couldn’t handle my Pentax K1000 slr. Focus is also an issue when we’re on a music tour during the summer of 1982. Christina is cutting my hair by the ocean and Russ or Ryan simply couldn’t manually keep things sharp.

I liked my Pentax K1000: you controlled the focus, you controlled the light, you controlled the picture and with that control, I messed up many a picture on many rolls of film that we not realized until a week or two after dropping the film to be processed.

With that camera, as seen in the photo album, I captured a 7th grade soccer game and basketball game. Which is a bit odd because I was an active player in both those games. I guess it never crossed my mind if I were on the team and was to play that I probably shouldn’t be taking pictures of the game with my Pentax K1000 with my variety of lenses.

Also, I captured many people whom I’ve heard stories about since graduation. One person is apparently bi-polar, another is gay, someone else has been divorced twice and yet another a corporate lawyer for IBM. I can not verify any of these claims. All I have are the photos in this album and how I remember each of those folks in the context of my album. For me, I remember those people as still being 16 years old and laying down on the carpet on a church floor after a long drive to Middletown, California.

I did put the album in the yarn room, a day or two after the encouragements to do so earlier– I think I just placed it on the first non-cluttered horizontal surface—possible on the bookshelf to the left of the room. I like the yarn room, but realize that I don’t know yarn like Lori does. To me, yarn is color and texture in the chocolate brown room upstairs; to her, it is the stuff to create pragmatic things—usable color and texture within a sock or sweater or scarf. She is patient with her yarn and isn’t afraid to tear out an entire hour’s work if the pattern has strayed. I know that she doesn’t enjoy ripping out all of that work, but she deems it necessary to make the thing useful. ‘m not sure I could do that with the color and texture of my past as seen in my photo album.

By Vergil | Posted in Belief, Coffee Stains | Comments (3)

RNC: You had me at “palling”

October 21, 2008 – 8:29 pm

I am incredibly happy to see that the RNC has used the medium of the Reagan era to convince me of…let me see…to question the other candidate’s lack of “caring about the country” because he pals around with terrorists Hollywood-types.

I’m not even told who to vote for in the mailer–which leads me to believe that the use of ambiguity is the newer strategy of the RNC. We’re going over the literary device of ambiguity in sophomore English and I’m happy that I can make another allusion of a terrific example of ambiguity for my students.

Now, being from an “almost” toss-up state, I haven’t received one of these mailing-types from the other guy (interesting that HRC sent me a mailer almost like this one a couple months ago). The other guy has real people call me and encourage me to vote early and ask if I will be voting for…wait for it…wait for the ambiguity…”Obama.” No robocalls, no mailers, mostly volunteers and the internets to get the clear message out.

And yet, the RNC is investing what little monies they have on Cold War time ways of advertising their ambiguous message.

Interpret this message as you may for I approved it.

By Vergil | Posted in Indiana, Politics | Comments (5)

Coffee Stains: Choose your battles wisely

September 22, 2008 – 7:40 pm

My father-in-law remembers it differently. He says that our first meeting was cordial and friendly and I tell him that his memory is a bit slippy. First, he should have remembered that Paul Hickey and I borrowed his Sony Micro Cassette recorder and hit “Record” and said some just plain silly things. We thought we were funny. Secondly, and perhaps more important, I was wearing my “Luv Ya!” kelly green pants which I thought was stylin’. Ken doesn’t remember that and why should he? Both of us, Ken and I, are fashion illiterate like most of our gender.

Perhaps it’s my mom’s fault because when it was time for “back to school” shopping, she’d just give me the local department store credit card and instruct me to get what I needed. I’m not sure if I ever asked for direction, so I was left to wander the aisles and purchase variations of the same theme: flair pants (avoiding that crazy bell bottom jean things that my sister wore) and t-shirts. About my only clothing purchase that I put thought into was the “I’m with Stupid” tee that was specifically for picture day. (I might have even calculated who would be the left of me in the yearbook…was it going to Jeff Graves or Karen Kane? Hopefully not Karen as I asked her to go with me via note and she wrote in “maybe”).

My mom did tell me that I needed to get a suit and tie for my 8th grade graduation: apparently it was a big deal for the kids of Guerneville and my mom might have helped me pick out that ivory white suit with pants, jacket and vest. As I think of it, it reminds me of something that Atticus Finch would wear on a warm, Alabama afternoon as he defended Tom Robinson. But I was 13 years old and I was wearing an off white suit and I had grown eight inches that year and so, in short, I think I stuck out from the rest of the class.

I think my time at a private school and then onto a conservative private college has lead me to a conclusion about clothes: some people care more about them than I do. Or, perhaps more accurately, those people are attached to what they wear and believe that it’s their God given right to dress however they damn well please, thank you. “And, if you dare mess with my clothes, then you can just go…” and you know where this line of thinking is headed.

So, when Debbie made me pants and a shirt for the Christmas during my freshman year in Grand Rapids I was a bit taken aback. First of all, no one had ever made clothes for me and second, well, I was going to break up her when I got back to school. I think she was excited to give me the box that January and though I’ve been given the obligatory sweater or jacket, I might have paused a bit too long as I picked up the navy blue, uncollared shirt with the little green frog branding the left chest.

“Do you like it?” she asked and I might have paused, again, a bit too long, because she continued “I like the color and, well, you know: I like frogs.”

“Thanks,” I responded and then caught eye of the homemade tag on the shirt: “Luv Ya!” it read and I think she had crossed stitched it herself.

“Oh,” she says, “there’s one more thing…”

And I reach my right hand into the box while Debbie grabs my left arm and pulls it toward her with some giddiness.

She must of read my expression, because she said: “Remember when I did your laundry before winter break? Well, I took measurements and I worked on both pieces for about a week during break.”

“Wow,” I said.

“Yeah, my mom helped me a bit with the inseam,” she said. “Try them on.”

Everything fit me pretty well, but as I emerged from the bathroom, I felt a bit, well, like a frog. It seemed that I should just start doing high kicks and get a top hat and take my skinny frogged legs on tour.

I did thank Debbie and I waited another month to break off the relationship…I distinctly remember that it was February 13th and you have to realize that I simply couldn’t take it anymore.

I guess I never really considered what I wore to be who I am. And, perhaps, my few attempts at making a statement were only mere spastic tries at being someone beyond me. Perhaps I’ve aimed too low on the fashion scale or perhaps, I simply don’t care that much. It’s the complaint from girls to boys or girlfriends to their boyfriends or wives to their husbands and it just might be a gender thing. Women care about clothes; men eat on the couch. For one, there is a nurturing aspect of selection and matching and arranging, for the other, life’s about consumption and piles.

So, I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on Ken for not recognizing my fashion faux paus during our first meeting. The fact that I even remember the incident probably has more to do with my wife’s reaction to the “outfit.” Not much was said regarding my choice of clothes and the arrangement thereof. In our subsequent conversations about fashion usually have fizzled into mere grunts or “while you’re up” requests from the pantry or the store. And I think of Ken’s advice to me during my engagement to his daughter; he told me, suggested to me: “Choose your battles wisely.”

Those stupid yearbook people cropped out my directional t-shirt and the “Luv Ya!” brand was discarded soon after my engagement to Lori. I’ve recently retire nine…yes, nine, plaid Timberland shirts that made up my teacher wardrobe last year. Apparently pleats are out and I’m just not a fan of the tie. Sometimes I tell Lori that “this year, I’m going with the tie and jacket look” and she’ll say something like “are you going to CVS for some M&Ms?”

By Vergil | Posted in Coffee Stains, Culture | Comments (1)

Just saying Hello 2.6

July 15, 2008 – 3:28 pm

Just seeing if the newest WP 2.6 is playing nice with Safari 3.1.2.

“That’s not too much to ask for, eh?”

Hello!

Hello!

And like someone had mention on Twitter, it looks like the media bar is working fine. 

In older posts on this site, the visual editor looked right, but when you save and viewed the post, all breaks were erased and you were left with one big block of text. Here’s hoping that Safari and WP have worked out their communication issues; if so, I am happy; if not, I’ll have to use Camino for WP posts.

Peace!

By Vergil | Posted in Technology | Comments (0)

U.S. a bully or Czech Republic a push over?

July 9, 2008 – 7:38 am

It looks like Utterz has just updated its services and has focused its site around discussions (no more Cow theme?). I think Utterz has always emphasized this, but the recent facelift (and the changing of its calling menu) seems to be a clearer presentation in positioning itself as the Audio/text/video place for communication around topics or just whatever you like.

Which brings me to this Utterz from gtowna that I listened to this morning and feel compelled to share. Why? Not because I completely agree with him–I don’t know much about international politics; I think I know that we in an election year here in the States–I share it because I think I have to be reminded of how the actions of my country affect others (aside from Iraq). 

I get the feeling that folks in the US are a bit antsy about not being #1 and that as long as we can still be in the superpower club, then we can still call the shots. It’s the popular kids sitting at the popular kid table and everyone is (or should be) looking at what the popular kids are doing. All the while, there’s those who aren’t popular, having to deal with own issues of relevance and identity. 

I think that’s why I listen to NPR and BBC radio, read Christian Science Monitor and The Week, listen or read from sites like Twitter and Utterz: to try and get a better handle on a few of the single voices outside Goshen, Indiana.

Now, I’ve got to run to Wal*Mart.

By Vergil | Posted in Belief, Culture, Politics | Comments (2)

50 Words on Buyer’s Remorse

June 27, 2008 – 8:19 pm

During last week’s Indiana Teachers of Writing National Writing Project Advanced Institute on the University of Notre Dame campus, we had one prompt of “In 50 words, write about buyer’s remorse.” The 50 words motif is fairly popular as it is less intimidating to write 50 words as opposed to 250 words. It’s really a great way to get writing started and then, perhaps, one could build from the 50 words. I think the other cool thing is that you are limited to 50 words…so you’ll need to edit, revise for word choice in the piece.

So, here was my response to “Write 50 words on buyer’s remorse”:

Fully conscious suckers, we were
into allowing men to “just clean a room carpet for free” segueing into “how much would you spend for a vacuum cleaner that does all this?” Agreed,
creditcarded,”Let’s sleep on it,”
restless sleep as a sign,
then we canceled.
Now we have a Roomba.

What’s your 50 words on buyer’s remorse?

By Vergil | Posted in Writing | Tagged , , | Comments (2)

Coffee Stains: Smug Green Monster

June 18, 2008 – 2:15 pm

CatsMy first real car, the 1988 Ford Festiva of Love, got rear ended by a van full of Amish folk. The current car, the 1993 Ford Escort, hasn’t lived up to the myth-like status of the Festiva–the Northern California nights of a San Francisco Giants hatted Dominos driver blasting the soundtrack to Cats out of Spark-o-matic speakers whiles eating an extra slice of pizza getting 46 miles on a gallon of gasoline. Instead, the Escort has been the ugly step brother of cars: purchased with the settlement money from the totalling of the Festiva and little love has been put into the forest green Escort wagon with it’s missing grill, cracked front bumper and punched driver’s side bumper. It is ugly but useful and like most ugly useful things, it has been quite consistent in being the designated “Point A” to “Point B” car (6.5 miles each way). So when it didn’t start the morning of the last day of school, I was a bit shocked, a little annoyed and slightly disappointed that the Green Wagon couldn’t just hold it together for one more day.

So I had to take public transportation.

We don’t really have a lot of public transportation in Goshen, Indiana; it is a small community, and aside from riding your bicycle and perhaps calling one of the 2 taxi services, about all you got is the Interurban Trolley which conveniently runs by the public library (about 2 blocks from my house).

I’m running a tad later than I wanted and the last time I rode the Interurban Trolley I found out quickly that the drivers believe in a schedule to the point of being much like my in-laws after Lori and me got married: on time means 5 minutes early. I was able to speed walk across US 15 and head toward the library while looking back to check on the presence of the Trolley and it was acomin’. The nice thing about the Interurban trolley is that you can also flag it down if you are not at a designated stop–and I was not–but the driver did pull over and pick me up (this may have something to do with my height or that I was wearing my optic orange polo shirt).

I take my seat halfway to the back of the Trolley and pull out my cellphone to twitter a bit about my trip thus far (for these are the exciting things in life that people should be reading, eh?) And then it happened: I began to read some of the signs on the Trolley. There was the usual “No Smoking” sign which seemed appropriate enough and then there’s that “Don’t stand beyond this white line” threat. The one that confused me a bit, partially because of its message, but also because it was the biggest sign inside: “No Profanity Allowed!”

And at this little observation followed by a chuckle, I came to the conclusion that I was doing a good thing: taking public transportation instead of stomping my big-ass carbon foot print in the sands of this day and time. No, I was riding the Interurban trolley while others, who could have done the same, were speeding by in their gas-guzzling, smog spewing, environmental death bombs that will certainly lead to the destruction of all things green and damn our children to an impossible, irreversible future of breathing air through a mask.

I was, in a sense, doing my part to help the future of the Mother Earth and was finally being a submissive fellow earth walker and a responsible one too.

I decided that I would skip getting to school 30 minutes early and get off at the Starbucks Coffee!about a 1/2 mile down the road from school (and that was an easy decision: coffee or people?)

So, for about 15 minutes, I walked to school along US 33 South as a myriad of death inducing vehicles sped past me (remember, I’m tall and I’m wearing an optic orange shirt with a Starbucks coffee in hand, walking along a roadway where very people tend to trod).

Again I felt smug; in fact I even Twittered about it (so imagine the lanky orange pylon holding a coffee in one hand and texting with the other). Indeed, I was good.

And that didn’t last.

I remembered the absolute fear in second grade that we all would be swimming in our own garbage by the year 2000 (and then the tear rolls down the face of the Indian chief and fade to some recycle message in white on back). Hostility returned to my smug face as I recall how fashionable now it is to “Go Green” and buy expensive light bulbs, not use toilet paper and buy a hybrid car. Isn’t interesting that in order to “Go Green” you have to buy more stuff?

Douglas Rushkoff points out in his Frontline video “Merchants of Cool” where he comments on how the metaphor for consumerism is not a mirror (where the ads and media are only reflecting back to us images of ourselves) but more of a feedback loop (where the “cool” new stuff is seen in people and the media picks up that “cool” and then sells it back to the mainstream and by the time “cool” hits mainstream, “cool” has been effectively killed…it’s no longer cool).

And that’s when it hit me: It’s a giant feedback loop. The media watches kids and then sells them an image of themselves. Then kids watch those images and aspire to be that mook or midriff in the TV set. And the media is there watching them do that in order to craft new images for them, and so on.

This idea that by the time something becomes popular or hits the mainstream consciousness should be a clue to all of us that something is amiss. When Leonardo DiCaprio tells us about his use of energy-saving lightbulbs or that entire networks are having “Green” weeks where both the advertising and the content of the shows are reflecting this “Go Green” message, you have to wonder what’s being sold.

And really, how much will a hybrid car help the environment? If one really thinks that burning fossil fuels is bad, why then (you upper middle class guilt-ridden suckers) would you spend almost twice as much for a car that still uses gasoline? “Every little bit helps” has been the slogan to sucker money from so many people who may truly care about various causes.

And it’s not over: we’re ready to enter into the SuperBowl of US Politics this summer and we really have to realize that every single motto, every single stump speech, every thing that can be squeezed on a bumper sticker is for a vote and not so much a promise to keep.

After moving through the smugness into hostility, a car pulled in front of me in a driveway to the one of the many car dealerships on US 33S and I recognized the person as a colleague from school. She asked if I would like a ride and since I was only 5 blocks from school, I said no but thanked her for stopping. And I remember feeling a bit mixed on if I had done the right thing by refusing a Good Samartian offer. Perhaps I should just take the offer as a reminder of the more important things in life, instead of getting guilted into a cause for someone else’s financial gain. Perhaps, it’s more important to remember the nice things people do every once in a while and to appreciate even the ugly but useful things in our lives.

Besides, about the most “Green” you see me get is when I hit my “mid-age life crisis” and do what I can really get excited about: buy a Segway. It’s useful and ugly.

 

 

 

 

By Vergil | Posted in Coffee Stains | Comments (0)

Help Chris find a power song

May 26, 2008 – 4:47 pm

A power song idea is from the iPod Nano+Nike mash up whereby you select a song that you play during your workout or run when you need a little musical “pick me up.”

I don’t have an iPod Nano+Nike thing, but I do have a Shuffle and I’m looking for some suggestions on what song to use for this weekend’s Sunburst Marathon in South Bend, IN (”from the College Hall of Fame to the 50-yard line at Notre Dame”).

Last weekend’s marathon was easy because Lori and I ran in the Cleveland Rock n Roll Marathon and I can’t tell you how many times I listened to the Presidents of the US sing “Cleveland Rocks” (good song to get from iTunes Store ).

Here’s some suggestions so far from Twitter friends:

 

  “Gloria” by Laura Branigan (from Trillian1117)

 

  “I was just flipped off by a silver-haired old lady” (InDebateCoach)

 

  “Disco theme of Star Wars” (rherdman)

Any other suggestions?

By Vergil | Posted in running | Comments (5)